Free!

The Snob's household is feeling the effects of a downward adjustment of income this summer. Yuengling beer in bottles changed to Yuengling in cans, and recently the Snob's husband switched to Natural Light in cans. That's when the Snob started drinking more tea.

On a more serious note, what does one do when there's simply less money? We rarely eat out and we've postponed certain home-improvement projects. But some things that may seem superfluous to other people, we've decided are important enough to keep, as long as we're lucky enough to be able to. Both girls take violin lessons, though we've cut back from 45-minute lessons to 30-minute lessons. They each participate in one sport. I'm still committed to buying tickets to performing arts events, although not nearly as often as I'd like.

The good news is that Richmond is full of high-quality, free or cheap concerts, particularly at the universities.

If you don't know about the Modlin Center's "Free Spot," well, for goodness sake, here you go! www.modlin.richmond.edu, click on the "Free Spot" at the left. All their free events are sorted out into a handy calendar. The VCU music department's calendar doesn't indicate prices at a glance, but it's full of free or cheap faculty recitals and other concerts.

Here are two in the immediate future:

Sunday, Oct. 4, 4 p.m.
VCU, Singleton Center
Susanna Klein, violin, and Dmitri Steinberg, piano
$5

Monday, Oct. 5, 7:30 p.m.
University of Richmond, Modlin Center
Matt Albert (of eighth blackbird) and Andrew McCann, violins
Free.

And of course, the Richmond Folk Festival this coming weekend has free admission to everything! It such a fabulous deal that you really must go--and drop some bucks in the orange donation bucket, please. I'll try to post about the festival this week, after I spend some time today plotting my intended course. (I've yet to follow my own plans, but that's the beauty of the festival, that it doesn't matter--everything's wonderful.)